We have some crazy bad news. Today is Saturday. We thought Ohh yes we can sleep in. At 6 in the morning we heard the usual morning exercise music being played on the loud speaker( in China the kids go to school on saturday, so this is usual), We fell back asleep, until we woke up again at 8 and relized it was the headmasters voice over the speaker. When a Headmaster's voice goes over the loud speaker it always sounds like he means buisness. Usually he will tell the students school news, but it is always at the end of the day. So we were alittle puzzled as to why he was talking this early in the morning. We decided well its not worth worrying about because its saturday, and we dont know chinese, so why worry. Then we were woken up again at the end of the headmasters speech by thousands of yelling kids. We then decided ok maybe its time to wake up!
Then we got a phone call. It was our foreign assistant who basically translated everything the headmaster said. She explained that the water in the river near our town is contaminated. They found traces of lead and mercury. So we are all not to drink or cook with the water. The headmaster has sent home all of the students and teachers and is saying we will have a break for 8 days! (explains the screaming kids)
Then minutes later we had 3 students knocking on our door. I found this weird because we have a huge security door downstairs that I wondered how they got through.
(later one of them showed me what he did. His arm is so skinny he can fit it through the bars and he opened it from the other side. ) We are so safe , right?? ha ha.
I told him, I hope thieves are not skinny like him. He just laughed and said he was sorry and that I should not worry because thieves dont come to school. Great! :)
I should explain that these kids have become our little tag alongs. Two of them are from my best junior class number 18. One of them, Jerry, wrote me a letter the first day of school that explained how old he was, that he loved english, wanted to know my thoughts on china, that he wanted me to come to his house and a ps that simply read I love pandas how about you.
The second is Jack, we gave him this name because he had no english name and jack seems to be a standard for a guy that you dont know. Joe is already taken or we would have used joe, so Jack it was. He is also in number 18. He is a lot more shy, but is excited to be around us and I think he knows more english then he speaks. Then there is Larry. We also gave him this name. He came to our apartment one night so nervous I thought he would wet his pants! He said in very broken english that he was in senior 3 ( thats the oldest class here, we dont teach in that grade because it is a grade that only has college review for the college enterance exam) He said he wanted to become better in english so he wanted to speak with us whenever he had time. We of course said yes. Then he said he wanted an english name. Larry is skinny and wears really stylish clothes, he looks like the famous chinese pop singer Jay chou sometimes I think. His hair is all styled so Joe decided he reminded him of a hawaiian college roommate he once had named Larry. Later that week we came home to the security door open, which we had closed and a post it note on our apartment door saying Hello my friends I came but you not here. Enjoy these good foods, signed Larry. He brought us pepsi and some really awesome chinese peanuts. He now also has a new email which is something like larry@ yahoo He loves his new name!
Anyways we are now calling them the stooges because we spent the day with them.
First Joe taught them american football outside. Then they taught Joe basketball. We then came inside and talked to Paul (joes brother) in america over skype, the internet phone. The stooges couldnt stop talking about it all day! Paul has a webcam so we could see him and my cat lou!! They loved it just as much as we did.
Larry cant wait to go to america and meet all of our familes.
We then went to the market and bought food that we thought we wouldnt need water for. We then came back and on the way saw Jerry's grandfather. A cute, nice, old man that looks like he could be from any chinese movie. We invited him for lunch too and headed home. Larry taught me to cook many chinese dishes after 2 hours in the kitchen we had a feast!
we feasted on tofu and pork, eggplant, carrots, etc. and all the boys drank a glass of milk. It was so cute!
The boys then spent the afternoon playing computer games and watching chinese tv, while speaking english. I can already tell the boys english is improving from the first day we met them. Wow what a day!
We are doing fine even with the water situation. We are thinking about traveling in these days ahead to see friends around our province. Dont worry we are fine! Just on Vacation.